


The pulse of sleeping walls

by wawalux



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Angst and Romance, Awesome Karen Page, Confessions, Depression, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gentle Kissing, Hurt Matt, Hurt Matt Murdock, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Karen Page Knows Matt is Daredevil, Kissing, Kissing in the Rain, Late at Night, Love, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, Neck Kissing, POV Karen Page, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Rain, Rain Sex, References to Depression, Romance, Rough Kissing, Season 3 Finale, Shameless Smut, Slow Romance, Smut, Surprise Kissing, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26579323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wawalux/pseuds/wawalux
Summary: “How did you even get in here?!” She’s still screeching, makes Matt cringe away from her like she is scraping her nails against a blackboard.“The window,” he gasps in a controlled whisper, cocks his head to point towards the living room, waves the concept of her unlatched window like a permission slip.“Jeez Matt, it’s the middle of the night. I could’ve shot you!”“Sorry I…knocked…” he shrugs, lopsided, drops the weight of his head in shame, but even that move is half-hearted, painful.Her anger stills, pauses, makes space for her mind to process Matt’s stance, his black-clad body and half-hidden face and the way that he is standing, like his body is trying to limp through the motion.“Oh God, are you hurt?”[Matt goes to Karen to get patched-up. Karedevil all the way]
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Karen Page, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 20
Kudos: 32





	The pulse of sleeping walls

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know guys. Just...this.

The dream starts between one slow breath and the next, sneaks in like the second thump that follows each of her sleepy beats, and when the scene unfolds, smack in the middle of a story, Karen doesn’t know to ask for context, she lets the stress unravel like a red carpet in her gut, spill to taint her careful fingers and fill the dark before her eyes. It all fits, the desperate need to find the file, the urgency digging in the pit of her stomach, the way the ink makes the letters squirm and slither on the page, try to hide behind each other until they bleed from the paper and Karen can’t tell if it’s her eyes that don’t work or the meaning has always moved faster than she could sponge it up. She gets more frantic when the documents start to slide away from her fingers, titles dodging her gaze as they move out of reach. Anxiety builds like that need to run, adrenaline packed and waiting in the fibers of her muscles, and still she doesn’t ask, doesn’t wonder, but trudges on. She’ll find it, the file, the relief, the one breath that will fill her lungs, the fresh air that won’t feel like a vice slowly twisting around her neck…

A quiet rap that sounds like silenced gunfire jerks her awake, eyes snapping open from one reality to the next and Karen finds herself faced with the lingering sight of James Wesley mottled in blood. It’s muscle memory, as if chiseled in marble, jarringly perfect through space and time, it greets her like a second pair of eyelids, her very own Jack-in-a-box, ready to pop when any noise could signal the end of the song. The dark does nothing to rub it off, she sees him lurking in each corner of her room, quietly opening her bedroom door to reach her in the uncoordinated footsteps of legs that have lost the right to walk.

Karen slams her eyes shut, rubs them for good measure and slinks lower under the covers, searching for the irrational safety that seeps from the knowledge that she is completely surrounded by blankets. She muffles a sob of terror, feels it sink down her ribs like she swallowed air, its shape perfectly round and dropping like a scratch down her throat. It’s unerring the images she can’t bring herself to forget, James Wesley or her brother, crumpled against the roof of her car, when the memory of her father, alive and well, is already blurring around the edges, like the details are fading from use. Karen is already afraid to recall him, stores him flat and deep inside, like she can protect him from the dust and sunlight if she lets herself forget him.

 _It was just a dream. Not real_ , she tells herself. She slows her breaths, bites her lip before she emerges again, face-first from the stifling heat of her blankets, and inches her eyes open. _Not real_ , she repeats firmly, forcing her stare to sweep her empty room.

The dark shape standing at the foot of her bed disagrees with her.

Karen stifles a scream, turns it into a high-pitched yelp that makes Matt wince. She has to swallow her heart back into her chest, hold it there with both hands, and still it tries to take flight.

“Jesus Matt! You scared the shit out of me!”

Even her voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere above her, like her soul escaped and came back in her body in reverse. She wants to stitch it back into place like Peter Pan’s shadow, sow it against the soles of her feet and maybe even her arms for good measure.

“Hi Karen,” he says, low and guilty, a slice of night dripping by her feet.

“How did you even get in here?!” She’s still screeching, makes Matt cringe away from her like she is scraping her nails against a blackboard.

“The window,” he gasps in a controlled whisper, cocks his head to point towards the living room, waves the concept of her unlatched window like a permission slip.

“Jeez Matt, it’s the middle of the night. I could’ve shot you!”

“Sorry I…knocked…” he shrugs, lopsided, drops the weight of his head in shame, but even that move is half-hearted, painful.

Her anger stills, pauses, makes space for her mind to process Matt’s stance, his black-clad body and half-hidden face and the way that he is standing, like his body is trying to limp through the motion.

“Oh God, are you hurt?”

Fear floods her like a tide, slowly and thoroughly, each cell drenched and helpless as a grain of sand. It’s in the reflex that pulls her like a hand out of bed, it’s in the strings that move her feet into hurried steps and in that desperation that makes her trace her hands all over Matt’s chest, his shoulders, his face, flap mercilessly like a pair of wings, like she is afraid he is about to evaporate, slip right through the thin gap between her fingers.

“A little,” he manages, holding steady, motionless, locked in that movement before a grimace, “It’s a scratch, really…but there’s, uh, glass in it and I can’t…I can’t reach it, I…”

He twists like a pretzel, folds back, arches, strains his arms behind him, forces his fingers further. Karen follows his empty grasp and finds a tear in the clothes, a slash right across his spine in the middle of his back where liquid that is darker than the night is forcing its way out.

“I’m so sorry Karen, I didn’t want to bother you, I tried…and…and Foggy is with Marcy…my mum, I didn’t want to…I just…”

Karen stops him, stops his desperate movements, stops the excuses that are hiccupping out of his lips. She places two steadying hands on his shoulders and presses them back into his body, waits for him to become that heady push and pull of lungs as their breathing syncs and evens out.

She can see the broken Matt struggling to be contained, unpeeling himself like a second layer of skin. Waiting, always waiting an inch away, out of sight but still right there, like teeth behind a smile.

She knows that Matt still bears the weight of the building that collapsed faster than his life when he chose to stay behind. She knows it’s a choice that he has to make again every day, each careful step forwards a new decision as Matt buckles and sways his way back into his old life. She knows each detail of who he is now feels new and raw, every cell of his skin complaining that his body is too loose or too tight, happiness encroaching in the comfort of his deserted emptiness like travelling ships on the horizon, fleetingly and small. Matt does his best to make that napkin belong to him again, the career, the friendship. And he manages, for the most part. It’s just that some days errant thoughts brush him with a strength that is too solid to ignore, leave craters that trip him up when he tries to place his feet on the ground. Karen understands the feeling all too well, having learned to place one careful step in front of the other, testing each day like an ominous and brittle layer of black ice. Some days it’s easier to make your way around on your belly, arms flailing at your sides. On others, a helping hand may shine like a ray of sunlight, melt the ice into a puddle that will wet your socks but let you stand on your own two feet.

“Ok,” she tells him, “it’s ok. We’ll fix it. Just…just tell me what to do Matt.”

She keeps her hands splayed on his shoulders to hide the tremor of fear at her incompetence and waits for Matt to grow back into himself. When he speaks again he is the confident Matt Murdock that she met in the office, the one who always knows the answer and shares it in a tone that rings with safety. She drinks it up like lead, his words, his tone, she drinks until she is full enough not to quake, until she is grounded by the weight.

“Uh, you’ll need tweezers. And a light, do you have a good lamp maybe? The one by the window sounds like it would work. Some gauze, or tissues. Antiseptic,” he sniffs, “uh, the Jameson in the kitchen cupboard will do too. And I guess a towel? Don’t want to wet your furniture.”

Karen notices for the first time that Matt is soaked, and not only in blood. Rain is splattering outside the window, drowning out the sounds of the night like bad static. Each move of Matt’s boot-cladded feet releases a squelching sound and Karen finds herself absurdly fond of the stains that his footsteps will leave behind.

“It doesn’t need stitches,” Matt continues, jolting Karen back into the present, “I brought you some steri-strips for after.”

He pulls out a small flat package from his pocket and Karen takes it, places it carefully on her nightstand.

“Why, you shouldn’t have,” she says, pulling Matt’s lips into an unsteady grin that is as weak as her joke and that glows in the faint light coming from the streetlight outside, “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Karen rushes through her small apartment, tries to carry everything she needs in one go and ends up almost bent in two and holding the lamp steady with her chin when she re-enters the room. She’s found a couple of antiseptic wipes in her old half-empty first-aid box, but she decides to take the Jameson too, for courage and well…medicinal purposes.

She almost drops everything when she finds Matt shirt- and mask-less waiting awkwardly in her bedroom. Matt turns at the noise her jostling makes as she tries to re-balance, or maybe it’s in response to her heart summersaulting in her chest. She hopes it’s the first option.

“Right,” she says, dumping the bundle onto the bed and carefully throwing her eyes away from his torso, “how do you want to do this?”

They end up with Karen sitting behind him, her legs spread out on either side of Matt, a lamp glaring between them and Matt perched cross-legged on a stack of towels. He hastily toweled his chest and hair before sitting down and now his hair is no drier but standing up in all directions on his head. Karen’s fingers itch to pet it back into shape.

His nakedness is all she can see at first, makes something akin to a sigh furl in her chest. She reads the scars that hold the devil together with eager fingers that don’t quite meet his skin, tries to steal the stories that they left behind. But the blades hold steady in their truths, hide behind the careful ridges of his back, the culprits safe in their anonymity even when they signed Matt’s skin. Karen can’t help but resent each one, how they held Matt back, a careful step away from her fingers, finally understands his hesitation when the identity he tried so hard to conceal was written out so clearly on his skin and that now speaks volumes of exactly why he hasn’t been this naked in this bed before. The phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ makes her snort, and Matt turns his head quizzically. She doesn’t realize that her legs are just as bare as his chest until he places his hand precariously on the naked edge of her ankle. Desire jolts through her like electricity, pulses and pools hotly behind the thin fabric of her shorts.

Karen drags her attention back to the cut and has to bite her lip to stifle a cry of pain at the sight. It’s not deep, Matt was right, but it’s jagged and crisscrossed and covered in so much glass that it glitters like a jewelry shop in her bright light. Drops of blood eek out in between and tentatively trail the length of Matt’s back. Karen follows them down, notices the dips and dents of his flowing muscles, fights the urge to taste them with her fingers.

“Matt, I don’t know…” her voice trembles as much as her hands, waltzes in all direction with her resolve.

“You can do this Karen,” he tells her without turning, confident, calm. She picks up the tweezers.

His touch stills her before she can move, a single gentle squeeze of her ankle, warm and fleeting before he leans down to reach for the Jamison.

“I was going to use the antiseptic wipes,” she tells him.

“It’s not for the cut,” he pushes it into her hands and Karen understands, takes a swig, then another, swallows hard against the sting and harder against the knot in her throat. She feels the liquid pulse like courage, a steady warmth that tastes bitter-sweet in her sleep-full mouth. The trembling in her fingers eases, transforms in rougher movements full of borrowed confidence.

Matt moves to put it down when she hands the bottle back, but she stops him.

“I don’t need any Karen, I can handle this.”

“I know, but _I_ can’t.”

Maybe he feels her distress vibrating through her pulse, maybe he can smell the tears that wait behind the lines. Matt downs two swigs and his shudder resounds in a symphony of clenched fibers that paint a picture of longing deep in Karen’s belly.

“Just…use the tweezers to get the glass out. I can guide you for the smallest pieces.”

The first few are the worst. Karen accidentally pushes the shards further in, tweezers slipping in her sweaty grasp. She flinches every time Matt doesn’t, carefully controlled clenches of his jaw that silently clack his teeth shut but leak in the tendons that tense in his neck. She watches the new blood taste the surface and it feels like a hemorrhage, for her; his drops but her ocean. She finds herself drowning in its depth, and it’s so easy to get lost, like taking a breath in reverse.

Matt places a steadying hand on her ankle, holds firm against the shudder of her nervous breaths. His thumb twitches occasionally in the semblance of a stroke, coarse skin brushing goose bumps into the smoothness of her skin. It’s like a match striking repeatedly against its box, Karen’s skin feels raw and alight, catches fire and leaks heat like smoke.

“Wait,” he tells her when another piece of glass ends up lost under the hardening coating of congealed blood, “try it from the other side, a little deeper.”

Karen tries, digs a little against the soft layer of exposed flesh, feels the sharp tap of metal against something solid, coaches the shard to resurface like a ruby. She smiles as she releases a breath that is caked with relief, tries to tidy her emotions enough to push them away from the surface, to keep all movements contained so that she can focus.

She gets better, gradually. She steadies methodically, moves so close that her breaths wash over his skin. Matt let’s her work, relaxes his back and swallows all reactions, occasionally guiding her towards another stubborn piece, like he would to a neutral piece of news. There’s a pile of glass on a tissue by their side, sticky with blood, one that Matt can’t see but even Karen can smell. It bristles like a star-strewn sky, one for each forbidden wish of this night. Karen swells with something resembling pride when the sparkling on Matt’s back dulls to red.

“So, how did you do this to yourself?” She asks when she notices his shoulders begin to stumble through carefully controlled meditative breaths.

“Oh, I…Ah,” he pauses as she digs a little, making her wedge her teeth in her bottom lip to snuff-out another apology, “landed in a window.”

“Something wrong with using doors Mr Daredevil?”

“Ha!” he barks out a laugh that probably swallows a whimper in its course, “now what would be daring about using a door, Miss Page?”

“I guess you have a point,” she tells him through a smile, speaks through her teeth to show it to him, the new piece landing with a light plink on top of the rest.

Matt shifts like he wants to say something more or could it be that he still likes listening to the sound of her voice? She remembers his unexpected confession when they’d just met, wonders how she had never recognized that delicious edge of danger in his eyes. But his head bows back down, releases a breath instead of words and Karen’s heart answers in curious disappointed beats.

He stretches when she declares him glass-free, shoulders flexing and muscles responding like to a Mexican wave, coaxing residual droplets from the gash but otherwise agreeing with her diagnosis with a grateful smile. Karen wipes at the lingering blood around the cut with a clean towel, tries hard to have enough layers between them not to feel him underneath the pads of her fingers.

The antiseptic makes Matt wrinkle his nose and his breath hitch in his throat. Karen holds as steady as Matt’s hand on her ankle, urging her on with the gentlest squeeze that she feels against her lungs.

She places the steri-strips methodically, almost obsessively evenly, pinching his skin together with one hand until the little butterfly stamps can do it for her. She forces the uneven edges to comply, finds a nook for every triangle of loose flesh and tries not to feel her life represented in this ugly cut, in the scar that she is trying to mold into the regular line of an ECG and that instead will resemble the imprint of a heart that shudders when it needs to beat. Karen pushes the thought down as she prods against the swelling and the cut stares back at her, a thin grimace on Matt’s back. She finds some clean gauze to secure on top of it, firmly pressing it into place with office tape and broad strokes of her hands. Her hands almost leave his skin, soothe the smooth edge of tape down subconsciously, like the glue won’t hold. Karen surveys her work, tries to keep her thoughts as blank as the gauze, tries to bring herself to let go of the tape, to let go of Matt.

“Don’t stop.”

Matt’s whisper is loud in Karen’s ears, feels like a secret that Matt dropped and Karen caught reflexively. She doesn’t dare to look at it, is afraid to hold it tighter. A strangled “what?” runs out of her lips, gallops along with her heart in her empty room.

“Don’t stop,” he repeats, coarse as sand-paper, even lower, it rumbles out of his chest like thunder before a storm.

Karen’s hands fall like the rain, grip his shoulders, bare for the first time but more hesitant than they were when faced with his blood. They quiver slightly as her fingers clench tentatively and Matt stills them when he leans back into her touch.

He smells like sweat and rain and that musky maleness that Karen knows on the tip of her tongue, his hair blowing wafts that are all too familiar into her lungs. She can’t not breathe him in when he is this near and has to fight the urge to lean in closer, to bottle up that feel of butterfly wings fluttering against the tense walls of her stomach. The rain pitter-patters its own tune in their silence, dripping memories that feel too close. Matt doesn’t move, blurs between the old Matt and the new Matt under her hold. Karen watches his fingers twitch like a tic on her bedsheets, grab handfuls of blankets and let them slide like water. Karen tries not to stare at them, tries not to remember what they felt like on her face.

They’ve lost their way and Karen doesn’t know how they ended up in opposite ends of the labyrinth instead of in its center. Karen hadn’t known how to hold on, she used one hand and then let go, fingers curling around empty air, snatching at the phantom heat left by his promise of a perfect tomorrow. And now they walk, lost on the edges and alone, watch each other travel to what she hopes is the same destination, while Karen just keeps finding bruises no matter how tightly she tugs her elbows in as she navigates her way towards him.

Her hands are frozen on his shoulders, absorbing the feel of him. The heat climbs through the brittle layer of blood that she wears on her hands. She lets it travel deep, pulse rhythmically like an echo of a chant mirrored on the ridge of a mountain. Matt doesn’t say anything, too soft and so solid under her fingers, pushes back until her fingers are forced to widen in response.

It all feels surreal, this night, this man. The light is Matt’s harshest critic and still Karen can’t find flaws when he wears the smeared blood like his Daredevil suit. The rain is their only spectator, applauds gently, masks Karen’s pulse when it runs in closed circles at the thought of untethering her arms. Matt follows her thoughts with his heart, she can feel it change tempo, shudder through her fingers.

Gravity pulls her down by an index, slowly, tracing his skin like a raindrop, like he traced hers, a million lifetimes ago. The night stills like it’s holding its breath, and for a moment Karen hopes it will never end, prays to be in this moment forever.

It’s Matt’s turn to stumble through lungsful of air. Karen watches his shoulders rise and fall, chest filling to the brim like the air is not enough; watches Matt drown in the awareness of her finger on his skin. His back bows taut, urges her on, but Karen takes her time, hopes the longing will linger like a scar on his skin.

She raises an army of goose bumps with her fingernails, tries to get to know each one and doesn’t realize it when her breath roars in her ears so loud that it drowns out the rain. She barely hears Matt whisper her name.

His hand cages her ankle and it’s firm, and it’s bruising and Karen can’t bring herself to make him stop. She wants his touch to leave a mark, she wants these moments to scar. Karen wants, she just wants.

She goes forwards next, explores from his shoulder to his chest with a long bold stroke, paints the canvas down to the edge of his trousers, faltering at each dip of his abs, slowing before each rise. She trails up then, leaves a hand on his chest, splayed out right over his heart, feels it bump a furious beat, feels his chest squeeze her name out. She absorbs it all like it could be enough to claim him.

His chest is heaving, straining the long-forgotten wound on his back, dirty edges letting go of their fragile bonds, fresh gauze now adorned with spots of blood. Karen can’t remember how to care, her careful work in tatters, hours spent fixing one wrong like it could lift up the row of dominoes that had collapsed around them. She lets them all go like she wants to see them fall, the sound of the rain clattering as they land around them.

She closes her eyes and her free hand climbs to his face, learns him like she is blind. His eyelashes sweep her skin as his eyes close, his breath hums against the back of her hand when she finds his nose, cheekbones half-hidden behind the coarse stubble that sends shivers down her legs. Matt is beautiful even in the dark.

She can’t bring herself to find his lips, not like this, so Matt does it for her. He locks her wrist in his drowning grasp and places a hot kiss in her palm. Karen fingers close around it, holds it tightly like she can keep the empty noise, the gentle feel of hungry lips, like the lick of a single flame, scalding and quick.

He turns slowly, unlocking his legs from beneath him one at the time, and Karen isn’t sure if it’s hesitation or pain that slackens his movements. The waterproof fabric of his black trousers is shiny against the light and coarse when it brushes against her hips as he towers over her on all fours. He leans towards her carefully, suddenly hesitant on where to place his hands, hovers with tense fingers over each bit of her naked leg, from her ankle to her thigh, then lowers them against the mattress, his pulse sweeping her bare skin from the inside of his wrist. Karen watches his abs tense between each breath, his careening heartbeats bouncing visibly on the underside of his jaw.

“Karen…I…,” he murmurs, hot breath clouding her face, it envelops her like a spell.

She finds her finger reach his mouth of their own volition, shushing him with one index pressed against his lips and then pulling down, until they expose the lower set of his teeth, and his exhales escape in short gusts that warm the back of her hand. She watches his eyes widen in surprise, empty gaze unable to follow the moment the way the rest of his body can. Karen keeps her index on his lip, forbids him from saying the words that could steal this night away from them. She lets the rain fall outside the window, lets it talk and say too much.

One of Matt’s hand braves the quiet distance between them, coasts lightly from her knee to the edge of her hip bone, cups the air around her breast and then pushes back, only to land hesitantly on the end of her chin. His lips quirk like they want to talk, still held prisoner under the unyielding pressure of her fingers, and his thumb darts out to the corner of her mouth, brush that segment of skin twice, the feel of his calloused hands sending shivers down Karen’s spine.

Matt leans, perfectly balanced even with one hand on her face, presses confidently against the dead weight of her hand. He stops when he can brush her cheek with the tip of his nose, head tilted and exactly one finger-width apart. There’s only fire between them, breaths boiling and loud. His lips tremble against her index, makes her tongue dart to wet her lips. Matt stills, gives her a choice.

Karen’s mind stumbles, almost breaks into a laugh, wanting to release the desperation and joy and nerves and the rest of the world that is making her breaths stutter and her abs clench and jolt. She never had a choice, not since he had stepped so calmly into her life in two broken halves, the devil and the Saint. She had fallen in love with both, helplessly and completely, and she still can’t understand how folding those two bits of her heart into the one man could hurt so much, like the two sides just wouldn’t fit.

She sees it now, the love that fueled her hate, the ache when she spit the words that drove him away, the way each of their casual touches would burn to embers on her skin, even long after he was gone. She can still trace the edges of the hole he left behind when he died, ragged and throbbing, she fears that it will never heal. She knows her eyes will never tire of drinking in his presence, even here in this bright light that turns to red when he lingers this near.

Karen drops her finger to his chin, smears spit as she guides him closer and lets his mouth close, feverish and desperate, over her bottom lip. Their pulses bleed together and burning breaths bump into each other, drown out the noise of the rain and the slithering of discarded clothing.

Matt’s hands want her all at once, bold when they palm her breasts, untether his mouth to seek her nipple and then wonder up again, trailing hot wet kisses in between ragged lungsful all the way up her chest, her neck and back onto her mouth.

There’s a quiet moan when he finds her with his mouth, fingers exploring inside. Karen finds herself tracing the edges of the gauze when she closes her eyes, grips his hair tight enough to leave small dent-marks shaped like crescent moons on her palms when she swallows her whimpers.

(Later, Karen will try to repair the damage to his back, the steri-strips stubborn and refusing to stick to his sweat-slick skin, like an excuse to stay behind. “Stay,” she’ll beg against his shoulder, gauze unsteady in her fingers. She’ll feel him harden against her in between hesitant needy kisses that he’ll turn to gift her mouth, and that she’ll return like an addiction).

Matt ruts helplessly in small jerks against her calf when her legs bend and her hips push open under his tongue, his trousers half-down from when she yanked at them in between open-mouthed kisses, boxers damp and hard against her skin.

(Later, she’ll stand naked in the rain and let it cool her feverish skin, hoping her scent will travel and keep him safe all the way home. She’ll watch the devil melt back into the night and count the beats of her heart instead of her breaths as his steps steal him away).

Matt drives her to the edge, moves his tongue inside her and pulls back, stubble slick when her hand finds his chin, nails greedy as they pull at his skin. She throbs in achy desperation and he grins, cocky, when he moves back up, leaving heat coiled like a spring low in her belly. He rests his head on her chest, pauses to hear her want reverberate before her voice has left her lungs.

(Later, she’ll understand that loving the devil is dancing with fire, it’s passion that blisters, obsession that consumes. She’ll wear the burns like springs in a lock, each one part of the key that leads her home).

Matt licks into her mouth to drown her needy gasps, fingers begging when they scratch against his back. Their hands bump into each other to push his boxers down and it feels like time is running out in this endless night when they forget to pull his trousers the rest of the way off. He takes her with his boots still on, moans her name like it hurts when her legs spread wide around his hips, and he stills in between sloppy kisses on her neck to rest heaving breaths against her shoulders.

(In that moment, Karen learns that the rain will sound like fire from this moment on and she lets the flame trickle around her, shroud her skin, drown her lungs, singe her veins.)

She comes before his fingers find their way between them, with Matt writhing long and deep and her lips free to whimper his name against the headboard. Matt doesn’t still in between her waves, hungry but tender when he buries his sweaty forehead in between her breasts, places gentle kisses that tease her nipples until the embers flare again.

(Tomorrow, Matt will greet her with a heavy silence and a hesitant smile when he’ll open the door. The take-out coffee will end up spilled on the kitchen counter along with her, pinned under his grunting weight as they’ll love their way through the wrong words. They’ll agree to try again with their hands intertwined above her head and the smell of rain, still heavy on their skin).

He takes her from behind when her breaths won’t steady, wraps around her back like a cape and holds on tight, each limb smothered skin-to-skin until Karen feels whole. He buries himself deep within her, takes his time, lets her climb back to the peak, leads her over the edge with careful flicks of his fingers, slick and slippery from her overwhelming wetness. This time she can’t even say his name, bites hard against his shoulder, makes his breath catch in his throat.

(A year from now, she’ll find herself absentmindedly tracing this scar on those nights that the city brings him home whole. She’ll remember how the blood brought them together like two bits of broken skin. She’ll find their souls intertwined in the scar that never quite smiles on Matt’s back. Matt will tell her he doesn’t know what made her come to her this night, but that it had felt like a journey had finally ended. His words will be hot and damp on her skin, his hands gripping her hips and her sighs loud and falling like the rain).

She doesn’t think she can, spent an exhausted, but she comes again, the angle is so sweet, so perfect when she rides him, watches him splayed underneath her arms wide, wrists pinned under her jolting fingers, sightless gaze lost in the feeling. She listens to him whisper her name in wonder, chant it and then beg, “Karen, Karen, fuh, ugh, Karen,” louder and looser. She traps her name between his lips and two cupped hands, steals it in a kiss that she’ll hide like a prize.

(Later, they’ll lie consumed, their limbs tangled like logs after a fire, Karen feeling the lingering burn of the scratching of his stubble, unsure of how it got there. They’ll stay silent in the rain, let their breaths whoosh over each other and their sweat get sticky in between their mingling skin. She’ll feel a tentative smile curve his lips against the soft skin of her breast when she’ll finally pet his hair back down, his pants still bunched-up against his ankles).

She pulls him up until she is sitting on his lap, rocking steady and chest-to-chest, squeezes his shoulders to meet each frantic thrust. The heat is an explosion, she forgets how to breathe, remembers to watch him come undone when she drags him along in a startled groan, right before she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back, his fingers heavy on her face.

Tonight Karen burns and the city sleeps on, unaware of the flames.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I KNOW, another karedevil fic, but what can we do when Marvel stole our happiness away like that?!
> 
> Either way I hope you enjoyed and please, let me know your thoughts!


End file.
